Ensuring Personal Information is secure is a legal requirement

Many Local authorities have their own list of customers who may pose a threat to their members of staff. These lists/databases are known under various guises;

• Potentially Violent Person Registers
• Hazardous Contact Database
• Dangerous Customer Warning Systems
• Caution Before Contact List

Regardless of the name they all amount to the same thing. A list that provides your employees with the information they need before, they meet the person in question. Let’s not forget that it is every employer’s legal right to provide a safe and health working environment for their employee’s. If your organisation doesn’t have such a register then you and your colleagues could be exposed to dangerous people without even knowing it.

However simply having a list/database is not enough, how to you protect the data that’s held on your register.

Ask yourself the following questions;

• Are you working within the law?
• Do you have the correct procedures in place to ensure data integrity?
• Are your processing the information you hold legally?
• Do you regularly review the data held in your register?
• Is the information held available to the people who need it, and no one else?
  

If the answer to any of these questions, is not YES, then you are breach of your legal requirements. You need to take action today!

Can you afford to take the risk?
The Information Commissioner is issuing fines to Councils and other organisations in excess of £100,000 for not properly protecting information, still over ten years after the Data Protection Act was revised in 1998. Many organisations seem happy to just take the risk that they are handling data correctly.

Protection of this data is not a hurdle you can’t overcome, it’s not an additional cost you can’t afford it’s your legal requirement! So you have to be sure you can answer YES to all the questions above.

INTEC’s InCheck Protector Software provides you with a secure and DPA functional database that facilitates your needs to hold this information and share it with your staff without breaking any guidelines set out by the Information Commissioners office.

For more information click here.